Well, at least the Hornets might actually be good for a change. Michael Jordan has finally called it wraps on his ownership adventure as he’s officially sold his majority stake in the Charlotte Hornets for a whopping $3B!
Say what you will about MJ as an owner, but he’s just made 10X his original investment.
Michael Jordan has officially sold his majority stake in the Charlotte Hornets to billionaire investors Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall for an astonishing $3B price tag, ending the MJ era of majority ownership in Charlotte. And, even though I love MJ as a player, this was the greatest move in Charlotte Hornets history.
I’m really not trying to sound disrespectful to Michael Jordan and his accomplishments as he’s obviously the greatest ever basketball player with 5 MVP awards, 1 Defensive Player of the Year award, 11X 1st Team All-NBA nominations, 14X All-Star nods, 9X All-Defensive 1st Team nominations, 6X NBA scoring champion, played 1,072 NBA games, 5th all-time in scoring with 41,010 PTS (having played the 2nd least amount of games in the Top-12), member of the HOF 75th Anniversary Team, 6X Finals MVP, and a 6X NBA champion.
Yet, as an owner, MJ has been one of the worst in the league since he bought the team back in 2010.
In the 13 years under MJ, the Hornets have made the playoffs just twice (2014, 2016), they have not won the Southeast division title once (they finished as high as 2nd once), they’ve never finished higher than 6th in the East, they finished 10th or worst 9 times, they have just 3 playoff wins (won all three games in 2016), they haven’t had a 50-win season in the 13 years, and their overall record under Jordan is 396-545 (.421).
Not too great on the team record side of things, huh? Well, how have their players performed on an individual level? Eh, not much better.
Jordan has only drafted three (Kemba Walker, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, LaMelo Ball) All-Star caliber players as the owner, he’s only seen two homegrown All-Star caliber players play for the Hornets during his tenure (Gilgeous-Alexander was traded to the Thunder for some awful reason), the Hornets have only seen 5 All-Star seasons from players (Gerrard Wallace: 2009/10, Kemba Walker: 2016/19, LaMelo Ball: 2020/21) under Jordan, Kemba Walker’s 2018/19 3rd Team All-NBA year was the only All-NBA awarded performance, and LaMelo Ball is the only ROY drafted by Jordan.
In other words, Jordan’s drafting has been just as bad as the Hornets record…under Jordan.
So, it makes sense that Jordan saw the writing on the all and relented on his majority stake ownership in the team as the Hornets simply haven’t been competitive, let alone decent, under his torrid reign.
Though, as I mentioned, I’m really impressed how he was able to extract $3B out of Plotkin and Schnall for the Charlotte Hornets, a franchise that has changed names twice, gone defunct, has never won a division title, has made the playoffs just 10 times in 33 years, and has only won 4 playoff series.
Sure, a large part of that $3B valuation comes from the tremendous popularity of the NBA, but Jordan still made $2.82B on his $180M investment back in 2010.
Anyways, I have to say that’s its going to be a little sad for NBA fans that Michael Jordan, the biggest star the league has ever seen, is just going to be sitting idly on the sidelines with no say or control in one of the league’s 30 teams anymore.
Well, sad for everyone but Hornets fans, that is.
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